1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved data processing system and, in particular, to an automated electronic business practice. Still more particularly, the present invention is directed to a system and an application for interfacing with a marketplace for electronic commerce.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, a variety of electronic trading exchanges or electronic marketplaces have been developed that allow businesses to conduct transactions across the Internet. In general, these electronic marketplaces comprise a collection of separate business entities that voluntarily interface their private computer systems with the systems of other business entities in the pursuit of some collective purpose or service. In other words, buyers and sellers of goods and services organize themselves into a digital marketplace for cooperative exchange of goods and services. In fact, these services may include not only “real-world” services but also purely electronic or digital services. These electronic exchanges represent a neutral, centralized, beneficial, computer-mediated, marketplace in which competitors can conduct a limited portion of their business activities.
While some businesses offer proprietary middleware for facilitating the integration of existing legacy computer systems with these relatively new electronic marketplaces, there have been some initiatives towards reducing the complexity of these interfaces in order to reduce the cost of interacting with these electronic exchanges, thereby increasing the number of business organizations that might desire to participate in the exchanges. For example, the ebXML (electronic business extensible markup language) set of specifications has been developed for creating an electronic business infrastructure that is based on the exchange of XML-structured data. The widespread adoption of standardized protocols should allow business entities to interface with electronic exchanges with minimal cost and complexity. While the adoption of standards may simplify the transactions between business entities, it should be expected that these business entities will support multiple electronic exchanges for various competitive reasons as they seek advantages over other business entities.
The convergence of Internet-based electronic exchanges, application service providers, and e-businesses allows an enterprise to conduct business in an increasingly dynamic landscape. From one perspective, an electronic marketplace introduces an aspect of transparency or openness to otherwise opaque or secretive business transactions, although it should be expected that business entities will desire to maintain some level of opaqueness or confidentiality in their business transactions.
However, at the same time that business entities are interconnecting through these newly developed electronic exchanges in a web of electronic commerce, the employees within a business entity need the ability to dynamically control various internal aspects of an e-commerce transaction within the business entity.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide new methodologies for allowing individuals within a business entity to control e-commerce transactions from an internal perspective of the business entity while enabling a business entity to participate in external electronic marketplaces or electronic exchanges.